On Working the Night Shift

It’s just after 6am and I haven’t been to bed. I have to work tonight, so I’ve done my usual routine of staying up the previous night. It helps me get back into my nocturnal life. I stay up and watch movies, read, respond to emails, surf the net…Anything to keep myself occupied.

I’ve worked night shift for the last year and half and I just don’t know how much longer I can do it. I love the people I work with. You have to have a certain personality to work nights. Night shift people are funny, cranky, they tend to curse a lot, and they drink their coffee strong and black. These are the type of people I get along with so well. I am one of those people. When a new hire comes in, I can immediately tell if they’re going to last on nights. If they’re too perky, or too conservative, or too stupid, they’re not going to last. It’s usually only a couple of months before they’re meeting with the manager to discuss a transfer to day shift.

I love the camaraderie on nights. It’s a small staff throughout the entire hospital and you learn everyone’s name. When you have a question about something you’ve never seen before, you know who to call on another floor to get the answer. You don’t have swarms of doctors at night like you do during the day. No fighting for your patients’ charts. No hunting for a free space to do your charting. The hospital is a ghost town and that’s the way I like it.

My biggest complaint with working the night shift has always been the negative impact it has on the rest of my life. When all of my friends are going out to dinner or planning a night of drinks and dancing, I’m putting on my scrubs and going to work. It’s always hard to get people who don’t work nights to understand how truly difficult it is. They never seem to understand how hard it can be to get a good 8 hours of sleep. They always seem to call during the day when I’m trying to rest. Even my mother doesn’t understand. She called on Thanksgiving while I was sleeping and wanted to pass the phone around to all of my family members in attendance at their holiday feast. I try to explain that it’s the equivalent of my calling someone at 3am and asking them to meet me for a cup of coffee. It just doesn’t seem to make a difference.

I suppose I’ll continue doing this for awhile longer. Eventually I will probably be that person meeting with my manager asking for a transfer to day shift. In the mean time I’ve gotten used to walking around in a perpetual state of sleep deprivation. I was told when I first started on nights, that night shift workers have a higher incidence of colon cancer. I guess I’ll just keep eating my fiber, pray for the best, and try to get some sleep in the process.